Behind the Madness
by xshattered-reflectionx
Summary: When the lights on the globe start going out in London, the Guardians know that something must be very wrong indeed. What they find is something horrible. Something they can't change on their own. So with some unexpected allies, they attempt to help the one human who may just be able to stop the lights from going out. But this girl has some tricks of her own...
1. Prologue

**Hello! So this is the first crossover story I've ever taken seriously so I'm working really hard on this. I really hope everyone likes it! I'd like to thank my friend and beta-reader Scorpiofreak. She has been such an inspiration and given me lots of good advice! Please go and read her story Winter Wonderland! It's amazing! **

~ September 1875 ~

Today was not a good day.

The day started off normal enough. North had already started his Christmas preparations. Afterall, it was never too early to start preparing for the best holiday of the year. Even if a certain irate Easter Bunny strongly disagreed.

The Russian spirit was in his office. A nice cosy fire was burning in the fireplace, giving a nice, warm glow to the room. The lights on the Christmas tree were twinkling (always his favourite part) and the light bounced off of the many ice sculptures that were positioned carefully around the room.

As North chiselled on the final touches to a small ice sculpture of a little wind-up train with his carving pick and tiny hammer, his most trusted yeti barged into the room without warning. The loud bang of the door slamming open shocked North into dropping his precious ice train, causing it to shatter into tiny pieces. Thankfully the other sculptures merely wobbled slightly before settling back down. The spirit's eyes hardened and his face went red in anger as he began cursing in Russian. He turned sharply towards the yeti.

"Phil! What is meaning of this?!"

The yeti garbled away in it's own little language. To any normal person it would sound like a mixture of complete gibberish and silly made up words that made no sense whatsoever, but North had been around the yetis long enough to understand their strange language.

As Phil spoke, the Christmas spirit squinted his eyes and became less concerned about his sculptures, focusing on what the yeti was really saying. From what he could understand from the panicked and garbled mess of a language that Phil was screaming out at him frantically, there was some kind of problem with the Globe. The giant one that displayed billions of tiny lights all over it. These brightly glowing lights were incredibly important, for each one represented a child that believed in him. The lights represented all of the children that believed in the Guardians. If there was a problem with it, then it must be fixed as soon as possible. Christmas would be fast approaching, and there was no telling when danger might strike. And it was with these thoughts in mind, that North stopped the yeti from speaking and then walked briskly out of his office, Phil following urgently behind him.

As the spirit made his way through the busy workshop, he managed to catch a glimpse at what was going on around him. The tiny elves were once again getting themselves stuck in the Christmas decorations as they "pretended to help". Some were just eating the many cookies...North had wondered what had happened to the batch he had ordered directly from the kitchen. With the mystery now solved he began to distract himself with the rest of the goings on.

Hundreds of yetis were seated at benches, checking some of his ice sculptures and making last minute details to toys that had been so lovingly handcrafted. North would've done the job himself if he actually had any free time. He didn't know what that was like anymore. He watched as the toys would then be handed onto other yetis who would begin to paint and stitch any final details so that they would be finished in time for Christmas.

The Christmas spirit smiled slightly as he remembered the excitement that went into making Christmas and all of the gifts. He nodded in approval at the work his loyal yetis were doing. He could always count on them to do a good job. They never let him down. Just as the thought left his head, he spotted a flaw. Scrunching his bushy eyebrows and almost stomping over to the offending yeti he began to explain, yet again, what he wanted this particular toy to look like.

"No, no, no! How many times? The trains are meant to be yellow and green! The engine should be green! Yellow carriages! How hard is this to remember?!"

North didn't like yelling. He hated it. But sometimes it was necessary in order to get the job done. So as the poor yeti grumbled an apology and began to repaint the blue trains, he decided to let the subject drop. The yeti got the point. The trains would be fixed. Everything would be okay. No more yelling. Problem solved.

Phil garbled at him again, reminding him of the important matter at hand. North raised a huge hand to his face as he sighed. How could he have been distracted so easily by such a trivial distraction? North gestured for the yeti to lead the way as they once again set off to discover the problem behind the globe.

As North approached the giant globe, he inspected it carefully. Hundreds of years of making and creating intricate toys for billions of children gave him an incredible eye for detail. Out of all of the Guardians, he would probably be the first to spot something amiss. However from what he could see, there was nothing wrong. The controls and inner mechanics that kept it ticking still seemed to be working. The billions of tiny lights that covered its surface were still there, glowing brightly. And yet, he had a feeling that Phil was right. Something definitely wasn't right. He could feel it in his belly. And it had never been wrong before.

"What is wrong Phil?" he asked in a more gentle tone. Perhaps now the problem would become clearer. Phil walked over to a lever and pulled it. The globe began to turn slowly until Phil suddenly let go of the lever, allowing it to come to a stop. Once he was certain that the globe had come to a full stop, North opened up the metal box that was connected to the side of the control panel. Inside was hundreds of cogs and springs, all in different shapes and sizes. Once he had made certain that it was not an inside problem and all of the necessary tweaks had been made, North reattached the cover and followed Phil to find out whatever was wrong.

The anxious yeti had climbed up the rungs of a ladder that led to one of the balconies that were used when inspecting the globe from above. The Christmas spirit climbed the ladder to get a better look. And what he did find, he wasn't expecting. North looked at the area surrounding the point that Phil pointed at. Those areas were normal, brightly shining with the belief of the children. His eyes moved back towards the offending spot on the globe. He watched as three dimly glowing orbs all went out at the same time. On closer inspection, he noticed that they were all in the exact same place.

North narrowed his eyes as he inspected the small country. Why was it just one area that had children who were losing their faith? Why was the rest of the children in this country strong in their belief, when the ones in this area weren't? What made these children so unhappy that they were losing all hope in the world?

"What is going on in London?"

**So that's the prologue. I hope you all enjoyed reading it, and please feel free to leave a review ^^**

**xshattered-reflectionx**


	2. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own Rise Of The Guardians or Alice: Madness Returns.**

**I would also like to thank my beta-reader Scorpiofreak. She has the patience of a saint putting up with me xD**

Sandy often visited Santoff Claussen. He wouldn't go all the time, and the trips weren't exactly regular. But sometimes, when Sandy finished spreading good dreams to all the sleeping children in the world, he would find himself with some extra time on his hands. Half of the time he would go home to The Island of the Sleepy Sands and do what he did best: sleep. The rest of the time he would find himself at North's home.

Sandy didn't want to bother any of the other guardians just because he was a little bored, but the Christmas spirit always welcomed him with open arms. That was the good thing about North. He always went out of his way to make Sandy feel at home. After being friends for a certain number of years, the two spirits had created a sort of contract. When Christmas would come around, Sandy would go around the world and ensure that all of the children were most definitely asleep, and maybe give them a few more dreams to dream, while North delivered the presents. Using this system would guarantee that none of the children would wake until morning, when they could open the presents that they had dreamed about with glee. Because of the extra help that Sandy provided on Christmas Eve, North made it a known fact that the little dream maker was welcome at Santoff Claussen any time.

This particular night, Sandy was in Scotland. A set of triplets had been tormenting their poor mother, who was trying so hard to cope and was now at her wits end.

Sandy had just managed to send said triplets off to sleep to dream about sailing on the ocean and having a fantastic adventure (they all wanted to be pirates and roam the sea when they were older), and the maker of dreams couldn't help but feel just a little tired. He did this job every night, but even Sandy had to sleep sometimes.

Doing all this work had earned him some spiced cider made by North's yetis. It was with this yummy thought in his head, that Sandy created an airplane out of his dream sand and strapped on some little goggles to protect his eyes from the wind. He didn't really need them, but it made the whole experience so much more fun.

He laughed silently as the airplane started up and whizzed off into the night sky. The maker of dreams relaxed a little as he steered towards the North Pole and looked out over the horizon. Dreamsand practically filled the sky, creating wonderful dreams about fairies and animals and swimming under water.

Luckily for him, Sandy's handmade air plane was fast enough to fly across the world and to Santoff Claussen before dawn even broke. The airplane quickly turned back into sand as Sandy floated up and then down through the roof of the main building and landed in the middle of the workshop, like he always did.

However something was off. Yetis ran everywhere in every direction, shouting all kinds of garbled nonsense. Sandy's relaxed smile quickly turned into a frown when he saw the mess. Usually he would've tried to understand what was going on, but the noise of the yetis' panicked shouts was too much to bear. He couldn't understand. There were too many voices. He had to find North, he would know what to do.

There didn't seem to be any problems from what Sandy could see. All of the tools and machines that were used to make the toys for Christmas all seemed to be working and accounted for. The toys that flew and whizzed around the workshop were still flying and whizzing. That was normal. No windows were broken. Perhaps something was stolen from North's private office? It was possible.

The Sandman was just about to go and check North's office when he suddenly thought of something: the globe. Something could be wrong with the globe. Sandy didn't know why he suddenly thought of that, and he couldn't quite explain the horrible feeling of dread that he was getting in his stomach. He knew that feeling. He'd had it before, and the end result was never good.

Even so, Sandy was a guardian. His job as a guardian was to make sure that the children of the world were protected. And if there was a potential threat, then it was part of his job to stop it. So with the feeling of dread increasing with each footstep, Sandy headed towards the room which held the globe.

He didn't expect to find what he did.

The globe had stopped spinning. Whether it had been done on purpose, or completely on accident, he couldn't really tell. The lights on the globe were still there. Except for one tiny little island in Europe.

England.

Sandy heard a voice yelling then. The Russian accent immediately told him that it was North, so he floated up to the balcony where he could hear the voice coming from. As he expected, North was pacing back and forth yelling in Russian. Judging by the tone of voice that the Christmas spirit was using, there was a good reason for him to be panicked.

The dream maker then realised that North had not yet noticed his arrival. With extreme caution, Sandy floated towards North and gently tapped him on the shoulder. The effect was immediate.

North stopped what he was doing, and very slowly turned around to face his friend. Sandy greeted him with a slight wave and a small nervous smile, allowing the smile to develop into a concerned frown when North didn't return the greeting with his own.

As the silence between the two friends continued, Sandy decided to bring up the cause of the disruption of the workshop. He created a question mark above his head out of his dreamsand and slowly gestured around. North understood what he was asking then, and his expression darkened.

The Christmas spirit pointed towards the globe and simply said one thing.

"The lights in London. Something is causing them to go out."

Sandy furrowed his brow and turned towards the globe once more. Floating up into the air, he got as close as he could to see. He didn't doubt his friend. He had seen when he floated in that the small island seemed dimmer than usual, which was very strange considering he had just come from there.

The dream maker tapped the globe a few times in the place where lights should have been shining brightly. He had only been to England, Scotland and Wales that night! Surely something couldn't have happened that quickly...right?

But no matter how hard he tapped, and no matter how hard he ignored North's protests about banging his fist on the globe, the island stayed in almost complete darkness. There were plenty of lights left in Scotland and Wales, but in England there were no more than five lights. And as Sanderson watched in horror, three more lights blinked out of existence.

Once the lights had finally faded, North turned to Sandy. The older guardian blinked slowly, the shock still evident on his face, but Sandy's eyes said to North that they had to put this right somehow. So North walked away from the globe and to a handle built into a different control panel.

North turned the handle to the side and then pushed it down. The giant globe immediately lit up with a beautiful greenish glow, that made its way up the globe and launched into the sky. The sky lit up with the green and pink glow that seemed to move on it's own.

The two guardians then sat down and waited. The other guardians had been summoned. Once they saw the lights in the sky, they would come to Santoff Claussen. All they had to do was wait.

**And that's the end of the first official chapter of Behind The Madness. I hope you liked it ^^**


End file.
